Women and Politics In Africa :: essays research papers

There was a young woman who left her home in Mycrorayan in Kabul, Afghanistan for Peshawar after the January 1994 fighting and told Amnesty International of the following situation. "One day when my father was walking past a building complex he heard screams of women coming from an apartment block which had just been captured by forces of General Dostum. He was told by the people that Dostum's guards had entered the block and were looting the property and raping the women." The following story comes out of Iran. "On August 10, 1994, in the city of Arak, Iran, a woman was sentenced to death by stoning. According to the ruling of the religious judge, her husband and two children were forced to attend the execution. The woman urged her husband to take the children away, but to no avail. A truck full of stones was brought in to be used during the stoning. In the middle of the stoning, although her eyes had been gouged out, the victim was able to escape from the ditch and started running away, but the regime's guards recaptured her and shot her to death." From China comes the following observation. "Still in the streets an occasional old crone hobbling around on her miniature bound feet was a relic of the pre- Revolutionary, almost dead past. I also heard an echo of that past in a silk thread factory in Wuxi, China. A woman member of its Revolutionary Committee was introduced to me as a ‘veteran worker’. The description astonished me because she looked so young. On inquiry I learned that she was indeed only 34 years old, but that she had toiled in the mill for twenty-six years, having begun this job as an 8- year old child.† These three incidents reflect typical crimes and injustices against women in the Third World countries. Crimes against women include abuse, slavery, false imprisonment, murder and rape. In these countries, women are considered to be inferior to men and are not granted equal rights or protection under the laws. The governments, religions and cultures of these countries support the inequalities, thus allowing vicious crimes against women to continue without any recourse by the victims. The phrase â€Å"women's rights† refers to the basic human rights that are withheld from women simply because they are women. Women’s rights promote political, social and economic equality for women in a society that traditionally confers more status and freedom to men. A basic right is for girls to grow up to be women: today twelve percent of the females born worldwide are missing, many of them